More on the Google's Latest Equity Offering

Andy Abramson had his own take today on Google's raising of $4+ billion (a non-trivial amount, as pointed out by Cody Willard in his note today - more than10% of GM's and Ford's combined market caps). I would have to agree with Andy - the proceeds of this sale are not for Skype (or Sk-hype, as Om affectionately refers to the company). Google's management is astute and too pragmatic for that. But then, Andy makes a whole plethora of telco plays (including a softphone SIP client, buying RIM or a directory service play).

Some folks (like John Markoff from the NY Times) suggest that Google will continue to make small R&D-focused acquisitions such as Android (click here for an interesting insight on that transaction, including a battle with Microsoft for being the leading software agent in the wireless search segment of China's mobile phone market).

Which gets us back to what will GOOG do with the money? Well, I still think that for M&A's of small companies (or even slightly bigger ones), cash is certainly not needed (instead the stock can be used as currency), or it if is, it certainly will not be anywhere near the vicinity of $4b billion.

So I dare speculate that it could very well be a telco play. But one that involves deployment of infrastructure. And which infrastructure? Wireless! Broadband wireless, be it WiFi, WiMax, or even proprietary. There is a big opportunity for the emergence of a third competitor that could offer triple play services in the US (not a telco, and not an MSO). If such a player comes up with a good, basic wireless service (one that is "good enough" will do), eventually complements it with an MVNO to offer voice, video and data and then prices it below the current oligopolistic equilibrium price between ILECs and MSOs, that will create some real competition and a major threat to the incumbents.

How much would it cost to set up such a nationwide network? For Wi-Fi, we have already some parameters (the City of Philadelphia Wi-Fi project will cost an estimated $10 million). For WiMax, the time horizon is much larger, so I really do not believe that the offering equity should have been now, unless Google management wanted to crystallize some of its winnings right now to build a considerable kitty of cash.

But hey, maybe this is too far down the road. Google is raising this money here and now, and so it could very well be that it could be to create its own IMMM (Instant Multi-Media Messaging) client application (allowing the sharing of video and audio files via video/audio streaming, IM, etc.).

Not Displaying Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status Messages

To turn these off:

1-Start Regedit

2-Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

3-If it is not already there, create a DWORD value named DisableStatusMessages

4-Give it a value of 1

Re-Enabling System Restore

If you previously disabled system restore through the Group Policy Editor,
the option to start it again does not show in the System Properties.
You can re-enable it again by:

1-Run the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)

2-Go to Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / System Restore

3-Set Turn off System Restore and Turn off Configuration to Disable

4-Right click on My Computer

5-Select Manage

6-Go to Services and Applications / Services

7-Scroll down to System Restore Service

8-Set it for Automatic

9-Click on the Start button to start the service

10-Close down this window

11-Go back to the Group Policy Editor and configure both to Not configured

12-Now when you right click on My Computer, there should be a tab for System Restore and you can configure how much space will be used.

Disabling Unneeded Windows Features (In Vista)

There are likely Windows Features running on the computer you don't need.

To see what these may be and make any changes you want:

1-Start / Control Panel

2-Programs and Features

3-Click on Turn Windows features on or off

4-It typically takes a little while for this window to populate

5-Hovering the mouse over an entry gives a short description of it

6-From here you can check or uncheck any entries you want.

7-For example, you may not need Windows Fax and Scan

8-Click the OK button when you are done

Google's Legal battles

Gonzalez v. Google

On Wednesday, January 18, 2006, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to compel in United States district court in San Jose seeking a court order that would compel search engine company Google Inc. to turn over, "a multi-stage random sample of one million URL’s", from Google’s database, and a computer file with, "the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query)." Google maintains that their policy has always been to assure its users privacy and anonymity, and challenged the subpoena. On March 18, 2006, a federal judge ruled that while Google must surrender 50,000 random URLs, the Department of Justice did not meet the necessary burden to force Google to disclose any search terms entered by its users.

Google's Partnerships

Google has worked with several corporations, in order to improve production and services.
On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers. In October 2006, Google formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.
Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service within Google Video. This did not allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.
In August 2003, Google signed a $900 million offer with News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit to provide search and advertising on MySpace and other News Corp. websites including IGN, AmericanIdol.com, Fox.com, and Rotten Tomatoes, although Fox Sports is not included as a deal already exists between News Corp. and MSN.
On 6 December 2006, British Sky Broadcasting released details of a Sky and Google alliance. This includes a feature where Gmail will link with Sky and host a mail service for Sky, incorporating the email domain "@sky.com".

New mobile top-level domain

In coordination with several other major corporations, including Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson, Google provided financial support in the launch of the .mobi top level domain created specifically for the mobile internet, stating that it is supporting the new domain extension to help set the standards that will define the future of mobile content and improve the experience of Google users. In early 2006, Google launched, Google.mobi, a mobile search portal offering several Google mobile products, including stripped-down versions of its applications and services for mobile users. On September 17, 2007, Google launched, "Adsense for Mobile", a service to its publishing partners providing the ability to monetize their mobile websites through the targeted placement of mobile text ads. Also in September, Google acquired the mobile social networking site, Zingku.mobi, to "provide people worldwide with direct access to Google applications, and ultimately the information they want and need, right from their mobile devices."



(Next Post will be very interesting (Legal Google's battles).....)

Google Philanthropy and Acquisitions

Philanthropy

In 2004, Google formed a non-profit philanthropic wing, Google.org, giving it a starting fund of $1 billion. The express mission of the organization is to help with the issues of climate change (see also global warming), global public health, and global poverty. Among its first projects is to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 mpg. The current director is Dr. Larry Brilliant.

Acquisitions

Since 2001, Google has acquired several small start-up companies, often consisting of innovative teams and products. One of the earlier companies that Google bought was Pyra Labs. They were the creators of Blogger, a weblog publishing platform, first launched in 1999. This acquisition led to many premium features becoming free. Pyra Labs was originally formed by Evan Williams, yet he left Google in 2004. In early 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, a company responsible for the online collaborative word processor, Writely. The technology in this product was combined with Google Spreadsheets to become Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

On October 9, 2006, Google announced that it would buy the popular online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion. The brand, YouTube, will continue to exist, and will not merge with Google Video. Meanwhile, Google Video signed an agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment and the Warner Music Group, for both companies to deliver music videos to the site. The deal was finalized by November 13.

On October 31, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased JotSpot, a company that helped pioneer the market for collaborative, web-based business software to bolster its position in the online document arena.

On March 17, 2007, Google announced its acquisition of two more companies. The first is Gapminder's Trendalyzer software, a company that specializes in developing information technology for provision of free statistics in new visual and animated ways On the same day, Google also announced its acquisition of Adscape Media, a small in-game advertising company based in San Francisco, California.

Google also acquired PeakStream Technologies.

Google Growth

In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading web log hosting website. Some analysts considered the acquisition inconsistent with Google's business model. However, the acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine, Google News.

At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7 percent of all search requests on the World Wide Web through its website and through its partnerships with other Internet clients like Yahoo!, AOL, and CNN. In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its own. This cost Google some market share, yet Yahoo!'s move highlighted Google's own distinctiveness, and today the verb "to google" has entered a number of languages (first as a slang verb and now as a standard word), meaning, "to perform a web search" (a possible indication of "Google" becoming a genericized trademark).

Analysts speculate that Google's response to its separation from Yahoo! will be to continue to make technical and visual enhancements to personalized searches, using the personal data that is gathering from orkut, Gmail, and Google Product Search to produce unique results based on the user. Frequently, new Google enhancements or products appear in its inventory. Google Labs, the experimental section of Google.com, helps Google maximize its relationships with its users by including them in the beta development, design and testing stages of new products and enhancements of already existing ones.

After the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization rose greatly and the stock price more than quadrupled. On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insiders). In January 2005 the number of shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders, which made the float 127.70 million (up 110 million shares from the first trading day). The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares. The actual voting power of the insiders is much higher, however, as Google has a dual class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. Page says in the prospectus that Google has, "a dual class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me." The company has not reported any treasury stock holdings as of the Q3 2004 report.

On June 1, 2005, Google shares gained nearly four percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. On that same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S&P 500. When companies are first listed on the S&P 500 they typically experience a bump in share price due to the rapid accumulation of the stock within index funds that track the S&P 500. The rumors, however, were premature and Google was not added to the S&P 500 until 2006. Nevertheless, on June 7, 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value.

On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (another mathematical reference as π ≈ 3.14159265) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. Google said it would use the money for "acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets".

On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center, and on December 31, 2005 Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership—see Partnerships below.

Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help in the open source office program OpenOffice.org.

With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Windows Live Local competes with Google Earth). Some have even suggested that in addition to an Internet Explorer replacement Google is designing its own Linux-based operating system called Google OS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows. There were also rumors of a Google web browser, fueled much by the fact that Google is the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com". These were later proven when google released Google Chrome. This corporate feud is most directly expressed in hiring offers and defections. Many Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer have left to work for Google. This feud boiled over into the courts when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, quit Microsoft to work for Google. Microsoft sued to stop his move by citing Lee's non-compete contract (he had access to much sensitive information regarding Microsoft's plans in China).

Google and Microsoft reached a settlement out of court on 22 December 2005, the terms of which are confidential.

Click fraud has also become a growing problem for Google's business strategy. Google's CFO George Reyes said in a December 2004 investor conference that "something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model." Some have suggested that Google is not doing enough to combat click fraud. Jessie Stricchiola, president of Alchemist Media, called Google, "the most stubborn and the least willing to cooperate with advertisers", when it comes to click fraud.

While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has also recently began to experiment with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio. This will allow Google to combine two advertising media—the Internet and radio—with Google's ability to laser-focus on the tastes of consumers. Google has also begun an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the Chicago Sun-Times.[34] They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements.

During the third quarter 2005 Google Conference Call, Eric Schmidt said, "We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build."

After months of speculation, Google was added to the Standard & Poor's 500 index (S&P 500) on March 31, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston that had been acquired by ConocoPhillips. The day after the announcement Google's share price rose by 7%.

Over the course of the past decade, Google has become quite well known for its corporate culture and innovative, clean products, and has had a major impact on online culture. In July 2006, the verb, "to google", was officially added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary as well as the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."


(Next Post will be (Google Philanthropy & Acquisitions))....

Showing Super Hidden Files (In VISTA)

Even with the Folder options configured to show hidden files, there are super hidden files that you still can't see.
To view them:

1-Start Regedit

2-Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

3-In the right hand panel, scroll to SuperHidden

4-Change the value to 1

5-Reboot

Access My Computer (or any Folder) from the Toolbar (In VISTA)

Often I want to access files on My Computer but the desktop is full of Windows.
Rather than having to close them down, it is easy to add My Computer to the toolbar

1-Right click on an open area of the toolbar

2-Select Toolbars / New Toolbar...

3-Click on Computer in the left panel

4-Click on Select Folder

5-Now when you click on the >> on the new toolbar, you will see a listing of all your hard drives.

6-Of course you can add any folder you want in the same manner.

Changing the Windows Border Padding (In VISTA)

By default, Vista has a somewhat thick border around the windows. If you want to reduce this:

1-Right click on an open area of the desktop

2-Select Personalize

3-Click on Window Color and Appearance

4-If you have Aero then Open classic appearance properties for more color options

5-Click on the Advanced button

6-In the Item section, select Border Padding

7-Change the size

8-Apply / Ok

Googl Financing and initial public offering

The first funding for Google as a company was secured in the form of a $100,000USD contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.[21] Around six months later, a much larger round of funding was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.In October 2003, while discussing a possible initial public offering of shares (IPO), Microsoft approached the company about a possible partnership or merger.[citation needed] However, no such deal ever materialized. In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. The IPO was projected to raise as much as $4 billion.
On April 29, 2004, Google made an S-1 form SEC filing for an IPO to raise as much as $2,718,281,828. This alludes to Google's corporate culture with a touch of mathematical humor as e ≈ 2.718281828. April 29 was also the 120th day of 2004, and according to section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, "a company must file financial and other information with the SEC 120 days after the close of the year in which the company reaches $10 million in assets and/or 500 shareholders, including people with stock options. Google has stated in its annual filing for 2004 that every one of its 3,021 employees, "except temporary employees and contractors, are also equity holders, with significant collective employee ownership", so Google would have needed to make its financial information public by filing them with the SEC regardless of whether or not they intended to make a public offering. As Google stated in the filing, their, "growth has reduced some of the advantages of private ownership. By law, certain private companies must report as if they were public companies. The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision." The SEC filing revealed that Google turned a profit every year since 2001 and earned a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million during 2003.


In May 2004, Google officially cut Goldman Sachs from the IPO, leaving Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston as the joint underwriters. They chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction (specifically, a "Dutch auction"), so that "anyone" would be able to participate in the offering. The smallest required account balances at most authorized online brokers that are allowed to participate in an IPO, however, are around $100,000. In the run-up to the IPO the company was forced to slash the price and size of the offering, but the process did not run into any technical difficulties or result in any significant legal challenges. The initial offering of shares was sold for $85 a piece. The public valued it at $100.34 at the close of the first day of trading, which saw 22,351,900 shares change hands.

Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. A total of 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 ≈ 1.4142135) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised US$1.67 billion, and gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google.

The company is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG.

Google in Early history

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford. In search for a dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph. His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pick this idea (which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got") and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind). In his research project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend, whom he had first met in the summer of 1995 in a group of potential new students which Brin had volunteered to show around the campus.

Page's web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page's own Stanford home page as its only starting point. To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm. Analyzing BackRub's output—which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance—it occurred to them that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page). A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google," was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."


By the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages. The home page was still marked "alpha test", but an article in Salon.com already argued that Google's search results were better than those of competitors like Hotbot or Excite.com, and praised it for being more technologically innovative than the overloaded portal sites (like Yahoo!, Excite.com, Lycos, Netscape's Netcenter, AOL.com, Go.com and MSN.com) which at that time, during the growing dot-com bubble, were seen as "the future of the Web", especially by stock market investors.

In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and click-throughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing). While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.

Google's declared code of conduct is "Don't be evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their IPO, noting, "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries. Known as "Google Doodles", most have been drawn by Google's international webmaster, Dennis Hwang. Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek Klingon and Leet. The logo is also notorious among web users for April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.

(Next Post Will Be (Google's Financing and initial public offering))....

Turning Off the Help on Min, Max, Close Icons

When the mouse goes over the minimize, maximize and close icons on the upper right hand side of a window, you normally get a display telling you want those are for.
To disable that display:

1-Start Regedit

2-Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop

3-Create a String Value called MinMaxClose

4-Give it a value of 1

5-Reboot

Turn Off Window Animation

You can shut off the animation displayed when you minimize and maximize windows.
Added 4/21/96

1-Open Regedit

2-HKEY_CURRENT_USER

3-Control panel

4-Desktop

5-WindowMetrics

6-Right Mouse Click an empty space in the right pane.

7-Select new string value.

8-Name the new value MinAnimate.

9-Doubleclick on the new string value (MinAnimate) and click on "Modify"

10-Enter a value of 0 for Off or 1 for On then hit Enter

11-Close Regedit and all programs then reboot.

Allowing Network Access with Blank Passwords (XP and Vista)

Although you can log in locally without a password, by default, WindowsXP Pro does not allow network users to access the computer without a password. Typically you will receive an Unknown error 31 if this is the case.

To change this setting:

1-Run gpedit.msc

2-Go to Computer Configuration / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies / Security Options

3-Double click on Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console login only

4-Disable this option

Google Milestones

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2006

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January

Our first Code Jam in China concludes in Beijing. The winner, graduate student Chuan Xu, is one of more than 13,000 registrants.
We announce the acquisition of dMarc, a digital radio advertising company.
Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China.
We introduce Picasa in 25 more languages, including Polish, Thai and Vietnamese.

February

We release Chat in Gmail, using the instant messaging tools from Google Talk.
Eric Schmidt is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Larry Brilliant becomes the executive director of Google.org, our philanthropic arm.
Google News for mobile launches.

March

We announce the acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processing application that subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs.
A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.

April

For April Fool's we unveil a new product, Google Romance: "Dating is a search problem."
We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.
We release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

May

We release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.

June

We announce Picasa Web Albums, allowing Picasa users to upload and share their photos online
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds "Google" as a verb.
Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.
Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.

July

At Google Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.

August

We launch free citywide WiFi in Mountain View.
More than 100 libraries on 10 campuses of the University of California join the Google Books Library Project.
Star Trek's 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas features a Google booth showcasing tools appropriate for intergalactic use.
Apps for Your Domain, a suite of applications designed for organizations of all sizes, and including including Gmail and Calendar, is released.
Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.

September

We add an archive search to Google News, with more than 200 years of historical articles.
Featured Content for Google Earth includes overlays from the UN Environmental Program, Discovery Networks, the Jane Goodall Institute, and the National Park Service.
The University Complutense of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project.

October

Together with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, we launch the Literacy Project, offering resources for teachers, literacy groups and anyone interested in reading promotion.
We announce our acquisition of YouTube.
We release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets: Word processor Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March).
We acquire JotSpot, a collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.

November

The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen to have her doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.

December

We release Patent Search in the U.S., indexing more than 7 million patents dating back to 1790.

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2007

---

January

We announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.

February

We release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local business results and mobile capability.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian.
For Valentine's Day, we open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only).
Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses.
The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex.
We introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the US.

March

Our first Latin American software coding contest ends with Fábio Dias Moreira of Brazil taking the grand prize. He scored more points than 5,000 other programmers from all over the continent.
We sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.

April

This April Fool's Day is extra busy: not only do we introduce the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) -- we lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office!
We add eight more languages to Blogger, bringing the total to 19.

May

In partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings.
We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support site.
At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.
Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment.
Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.
On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.

June

Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.
YouTube becomes available in nine more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the U.K.
We announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company's on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.
We unveil several "green" initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the completion of our installation of solar panels at the Googleplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. We also announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell, and more than 30 other companies.
Google Earth Outreach is introduced, designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their causes.

July

We announce the acquisition of Postini.
The first CNN/YouTube debate takes place between the eight U.S. Democratic Presidential candidates. (The Republicans get their turn in November 2007.)
Google Finance becomes available for non-U.S. markets for the first time, in Canada.
Google Apps is now available in 28 languages.

August

We ask users for their interpretation of how Gmail travels around the world, and get more than 1,100 video responses from more than 65 different countries.
To infinity and beyond! Sky launches inside Google Earth, including layers for constellation information and virtual tours of galaxies.

September

AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites.
Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.
We add Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.
Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

October

We partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.

November

We announce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks.
Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge.
Google.org announces RE

December

The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.

---

2008

---

January

Google.org announces five key initiatives: in addition to the previously-announced REWe bid in the 700 MHz spectrum auction to ensure that a more open wireless world becomes available to consumers.

February

For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.
Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enables users to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents, and calendars.

March

We finally complete the acquisition deal for DoubleClick.
Together with Yahoo and MySpace, we announce the OpenSocial Foundation, an independent non-profit group designed to provide transparency and operational guidelines around the open software tools for social computing.

April

We feature 16 April Fool's jokes from our offices around the world, including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China), and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are "Rickrolled."
A new version of Google Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard.
Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It's a free website-testing tool with which users can continually test different combinations of their website content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.
We launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.
We introduce a collection of 70+ new themes ("skins") for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.

May

Following both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.
Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1.
At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect, a set of functions and applications enabling website owners to easily make their sites social by adding registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, plus applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.
With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6, a new IP address space large enough to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6.
Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.
We introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog.
California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle "Up In The Clouds."

June

Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.
A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.
For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.

July

We provide Street View for the entire 2008 Tour de France route -- the first launch of Street View imagery in Europe.
Our first downloadable iPhone app, featuring My Location and word suggestions for quicker mobile searching, debuts with the launch of the Apple 3G iPhone.
We work with the band Radiohead to make a music video of their song "House of Cards," using only data, and not cameras.
Our indexing system for processing links indicates that we now count 1 trillion unique URLs (and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day).

August

Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia - the first time it's appeared outside of North America or Europe.
Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors, and reduce keystrokes.
Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.

September

Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later.
We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.
We release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker, and easier syncing with the web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing users to "name tag" people in photos.
Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.
Thanks to all of our users, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.


And on and on....

What's next from Google? It's hard to say. We don't talk much about what lies ahead, because we believe one of our chief competitive advantages is surprise. You can always take a peek at some of the ideas our engineers are currently kicking around by visiting them at Google Labs. Have fun, but be sure to wear your safety goggles.

Google Milestones

---

2001

---

January

We announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.

February

Our first public acquisition: Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

March

Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.
Google.com is available in 26 languages.

April

Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.

July

Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

August

We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

October

A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.

December

Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.

---

2002

---

February

Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.
The first Google hardware is released: it's a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.
We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

April

For April Fool's Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.
We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion Web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

May

We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.
We release Google Labs for users to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.

September

Google News launches with 4000 news sources.

October

We open our first Australian office in Sydney.

December

Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).

---

2003

---

January

American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word of the Year for 2002.

February

We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.

March

We announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

April

We launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

October

Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

December

We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.

---

2004

---

January

orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.

February

Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.

March

We move to our new "Googleplex" at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment.
We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for the enterprise search business.
We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)

April

For April Fool's we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new research facility on the Moon.

May

We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.


August

Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.


September

There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.

October

We formally open our office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney.
Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on your mobile device.
Larry and Sergey are named Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes "lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet."
We spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry.
Google Desktop Search is introduced: users can now search for files and documents stored on their own hard drive using Google technology.
We launch the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service that helps users search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.
We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

November

Our index of web pages reaches 8 billion.
December

We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.
The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford plus the New York Public Library.

---

2005

---

February

We hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.
Google Maps goes live.

March

We launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs.
Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.
We acquire Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.

April

Our first Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users.
For April Fool's, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.
Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.
Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.
My Search History launches in Labs, allowing users to view all the web pages they've visited and Google searches they've made over time.
We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.

May

We release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.
Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.
Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle ) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.


June

We hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development.
Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.
We unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.
We release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests.
API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

August

Google scores well in the U.S. government's 2005 machine translation evaluation. (We've done so in subsequent years as well.)
We launch Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables Gmail users to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

September

Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims.
DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China.
Google Blog Search goes live; it's the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.

October

Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event with Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point." Since then, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.

November

We release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.
We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.

December

Google Transit launches in Labs. People in the Portland, Oregon metro area can now plan their trips on public transportation at one site.
Gmail for mobile launches in the United States.


(Countinue wait for the next post plz.........)

Google Milestones.......

---

1995-1997

---

1995

Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 24, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 23, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

1996

Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year -- eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

1997

Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google -- a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

---

1998

---

August

Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

September

Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check.
Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he's a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

December

"PC Magazine" reports that Google "has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results" and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

---

1999

---

February

We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just 8 employees.

May

Omid Kordestani joins to run sales -- the first non-engineering hire.

June

Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing "Googlers" as "people who use Google."

August

We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.

November

Charlie Ayers joins as Google's first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company's 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

---

2000

---

April

On April Fool's Day, we announce the MentalPlex: Google's ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

May

The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.
We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice (voted by users).

June

We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.
We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world's largest search engine.

September

We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

October

Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

December
Google Toolbar is released. It's a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.



(Countinue wait for the next post.........)

Identify Faulty Device Drivers

If you are having problems with lockups, blue screens, or can only get to safe mode,
often the problem is due to a faulty device driver.

One way to help identify them is through the use of the Verfier program

Start / Run / Verifier

Keep the default of Create Standard Settings

Select the type of drivers you want to confirm

A list of drivers to be verified on the next boot will be shown.

Reboot
If your computer stops with a blue screen, you should get an error message with the problem driver

To turn off the Verifier, run verifier /reset

Changing the User Type

Normally in XP Pro, through the Control Panel / User Accounts icon, you are only allowed to create administrators or limited users.
If you want to create

Right click on My Computer

Manage

Local Users and Groups

Users

Right click on the user you want to change

Properties

Member of tab

Add button

Advanced button

Find Now button

From here you see the full list of possibilities (e.g. Power User, Backup Operator etc.)

Creating a Suspend Shortcut

If you would like to create an icon to suspend your computer,

Right click on the Desktop

New / Shortcut

Enter in rundll32.exe PowrProf.dll, SetSuspendState

Give it whatever name you want

Now when you click on that shortcut, your computer will shutdown and suspend

Latest Technology

First Beam Circles Large Hadron Collider Track

The Large Hadron Collider fired its first beam around the machine's full track at 10:28 AM local time (1:36 AM Pacific time).

No actual atoms were smashed today -- that won't start for weeks -- and no results are expected for months, at the earliest. Still, like first light in a telescope, the first beam in the particle accelerator is a landmark moment for a program that has spanned more than 20 years and involved tens of thousands of scientists.

"What has been shown today is that technically it all works," said Jos Engelen, chief science officer for CERN, the European scientific research agency directing the efforts, in a live webcast from Geneva.

The proton beams that raced around the 17-mile mile track begin a scientific relay that is likely to last for more than a decade. Scientists hope the discoveries made possible by the LHC will open new frontiers in physics and provide a new fundamental understanding of the universe.

Next up for the collider is cranking up the energy of the proton beams to about 10 trillion electron volts, more powerful than other particle accelerators like Fermilab's Tevatron but still short of the proposed maximum collision energy of 14 trillion electron volts that the researchers hope to reach.

The next big moment will come when the first particle collisions occur. That had been tentatively scheduled for the official LHC unveiling on October 21, but the first beam firings could lead to an acceleration of that schedule.

"Based on today's evidence, things are going to move faster," said Mike Lamont, a member of CERN's beam operations team in the CERN webcast. "There's a remarkable number of systems working remarkably well -- the instrumentation, the magnets. There's still some hurdles to cross there, but we can anticipate collisions sooner than we planned."

Preparing to Move Hard Drive to Another Computer

To remove the devices from device manager when taking a HD from one computer to another,
simply:

Run Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ and delete the Enum section
This removes all of the hardware specific settings

Locking File Associations

If you have your file associations the way you want for a particular file type, you can remove it from the list that gets displayed in the Folder Options / File Types screen

Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Scroll to the file association you want to lock.
In the right panel, create a new Binary value
Call it EditFlags
Give it a value of 01 00 00 00
Now when you go to the Folder Options / File Types screen, you won't see that file type listed.

Services You Can Disable

There are quite a few services you can disable from starting automatically.
This would be to speed up your boot time and free resources.
They are only suggestions so I suggestion you read the description of each one when you run Services
and that you turn them off one at a time.

Some possibilities are:

Alerter - Sends alert messages to specified users that are connected to the server computer.

Application Management - Allows software to tap directly into the Add/Remove Programs feature via the Windows Installer technology.

Background Intelligent Transfer Service - The Background Intelligent Transfer service is used by programs (such as Windows AutoUpdate) to download files by using spare bandwidth.

Clipbook - ClipBook permits you to cut and paste text and graphics over the network.

Error Reporting Service - Allows applications to send error reports to Microsoft in the event of an application fault.

Fast User Switching - Windows XP allows users to switch quickly between accounts, without requiring them to log off.

Help and Support - Allows the XP Built-in Help and Support Center to run.

IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service - You don't need this if you have other software to create CDs.

Indexing Service - Indexes contents and properties of files on local and remote computers; provides rapid access to files through flexible querying language.

IP SEC - Manages IP security policy and starts the ISAKMP/Oakley (IKE) and the IP security driver. If you are not on a domain, you likely don't need this running.

Messenger - Transmits net send and Alerter service messages between clients and servers. This is how a lot of pop-up windows start appearing on your desktop.

Net Logon - Supports pass-through authentication of account logon events for computers in a domain. If you are not on a domain, you don't need this running

Network DDE - Provides network transport and security for Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) for programs running on the same computer or on different computers.

NT LM Security Support Provider - Provides security to remote procedure call (RPC) programs that use transports other than named pipes.

Performance Logs and Alerts - Collects performance data from local or remote computers based on preconfigured schedule parameters, then writes the data to a log or triggers an alert. If you don't need to monitor your performance logs, then you don't need this service.

Portable Media Serial Number - Retrieves the serial number of any portable music player connected to your computer
QOS RSVP - Provides network signaling and local traffic control setup functionality for QoS-aware programs and control applets.

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager - Manages and controls Remote Assistance. If you are not using Remote Desktop you don't need this service.

Remote Registry - Enables remote users to modify registry settings on this computer.

Routing & Remote Access - Offers routing services to businesses in local area and wide area network environments. Allows dial-in access.

Secondary Login - Enables starting processes under alternate credentials. This is what allows you to run an application as another user.

Smart Card - Manages access to smart cards read by this computer.
Smart Card Helper - Enables support for legacy non-plug and play smart-card readers used by this computer.

SSDP Discovery Service - Enables discovery of UPnP devices on your home network.

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper - Enables support for NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) service and NetBIOS name resolution. This should not be needed in today's network environment.

Telnet - Enables a remote user to log on to this computer and run programs, and supports various TCP/IP Telnet clients.

Uninterruptible Power Supply Service - Manages an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) connected to the computer.

Universal Plug and Play Device Host - Provides support to host Universal Plug and Play devices

Upload Manager - Manages synchronous and asynchronous file transfers between clients and servers on the network.

Volume Shadow Copy Service - Manages and implements Volume Shadow Copies used for backup and other purposes.

Web Client - Enables Windows-based programs to create, access, and modify non-local files across the Internet.

Wireless Zero Configuration - Provides automatic configuration for the 802.11 adapters

WMI Performance Adapter - Provides performance library information from WMI HiPerf providers.

Increasing System Performance

If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performance
by having the core system kept in memory.

Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive

Set the value to be 1

Reboot the computer

Speeding Up the Display of Start Menu Items

An easy way to speed up the display of the Start Menu Items is to turn off the menu shadow.

Right click on an open area of the Desktop

Select Properties

Click on the Appearance tab

Click on the Effects button

Uncheck Show shadows under menus

Increasing Graphics Performance

By default, WindowsXP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items.
Most simply slow down their display.

To turn these off selectively:

Right click on the My Computer icon
Select Properties
Click on the Advanced tab
Under Performance, click on the Settings button
To turn them all of, select Adjust for best performance
My preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging

Increasing the Folder Cache

The default setting for WindowsXP is to cache the Explorer settings for 400 folders.
To increase it:

Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam
Change the vaule of BagMRU to whatever size you want (hex)
1000 - 3e8
2000 - 7d0
3000 - bb8
4000 - fa0
5000 - 1388

Additional Utilities (XP)

On the XP CD in the \Support\Tools directory, there are a lot of additional support and troubleshooting utilities.
You can run SETUP from that directory to install them.

Just a few are:

diruse Shows Disk Usage
dupfinder Finds Duplicate files
getmac Get's MAC address of the network card
hostname Shows the host name of the computer
netdiag Diagnoses a variety of network components
pviewer Show a list of process and allows you to get a memory detail or kill any process
windiff Compare files and directories

Services You Can Disable (In Vista)

There are several services you can disable to help improve performance.

Desktop Window Manager Session Manager - Provides Desktop Window Manager startup and maintenance services.
If you don't plan on using Aero Glass, you can disable this service.

Diagnostic Policy Service - Enables problem detection, troubleshooting and resolution for Windows components
Set to Disabled

Diagnostic Service Host - Same as above

Diagnostic System Host - Same as above

Offline Files - The Offline Files service performs maintenance activities on the Offline Files cache, responds to user logon and logoff events, implements the internals of the public API, and dispatches interesting events to those interested in Offline Files activities and changes in cache state.

Terminal Services - Allows users to connect interactively to a remote computer. Remote Desktop and Terminal Server depend on this service. If you don't use either of these, then you can disable the service.

Windows Error Reporting Service - Allows errors to be reported when programs stop working or responding and allows existing solutions to be delivered.

Windows Search - Formerly this was the Indexing Service. Provides content indexing.

Changing the Sidebar (In Vista)

By default, the sidebar can take up a unwanted room on the desktop. You also can't put icons on the space it uses.
If you want to retain the ability to display the sidebar gadgets but also want full use of the desktop,
you can detach individual gadgets.

Right-click the gadget you want to detach
Click Detach from Sidebar
Move the gadget wherever you want on the desktop
Right click on the sidebar
Click on Close Sidebar
There will now be an icon in the system tray for the sidebar if you want to get it back

GUI Performance

You can turn off some of the eyecandy to help speed of graphics performance

Open the Start menu
Right click on My Computer
Select Properties
Click on Advanced System Settings
In the Performance section, click on the Settings button
Click on Custom
I usually only have:
Show preview and filters in folder,
Show shadows under mouse pointer,
Show thumbnails instead of icons,
Show window contents while dragging,
Smooth edges of screen fonts,
Use drop shadows for icon labels,
Use visual styles on windows and buttons

Access Denied to Folders

If you are getting Access Denied errors when trying to open folders like Documents and Settings, Application Data, Local settings:

Right click on the Folder
Select Properties
Click on the Security tab
Click on the Advanced button
Click on the Owner tab
Click on the Edit button
In the Change owner to box, highlight your account
Check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects
Click on Apply
Click on Yes to replace all permissions
Continue to click on OK until you